Recently, beverage cans have been packaged in cartons containing a dozen cans, but it has been determined that the standard hand truck depicted in typical hand trucks, such as shown in the present Assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 3,997,182, are not eminently suited to transporting these cartons in the stack configurations desired. Manufacturers of beverage containers are today desirous of transporting 12-16 cardboard cartons of twelve-pack cartons at a time in multiple stacks, with a total load weight of more than two hundred pounds. Typically, such cartons are five inches tall and have side and end dimensions of 101/2 and 73/4 inches, respectively, and when stacked in multiple stacks, the cartons extend beyond the sides of the hand truck's vertically disposed side rails. To provide an extended support surface for such stacks of cartons, hand trucks have been provided with vertical wing strips which pivot about vertical axes and include laterally outward end flanges for receiving and restricting movement of the cartons in the stacks. Such pivotal wings may be secured directly to the primary frame side rails in a manner to promote the transfer of load to the primary frame. When not in use, the wings are pivoted or folded inwardly to a laterally inboard position in which they lie generally parallel to the laterally inboard sides of the frame side rails.
It is common practice to carry such hand trucks on beverage transporting trucks in a position in which the nose plates are projecting rearwardly with the nose plates received in slots provided for them on the transporter truck. With the hand truck facing rearwardly from normal operating position, and the pivotal wings lying in folded inoperative position, the wind vortex created by the transport truck moving in a forward direction tends to force the wings to pivot away from folded position. This creates a rattling noise which is undesirable and, further, can result in damage to the wings.